Adil Najam
News is just breaking that former Prime Minister and head of the Pakistan People’s Party, Benazir Bhutto was killed in Rawalpindi in a terrorist attack.
She was gunned down by an assassin who then blew himself up in a suicide attack. This happened at the end of her rally in Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi; the same place where Liaqat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister was assassinated. Major news networks are now reporting that following bomb blasts at Benazir Bhutto’s rally in Rawalpindi, shots were fired directly targeting her. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari says that one of these shots hit her in the neck and killed her.
According to early BBC reports:
Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a presumed suicide attack, a military spokesman has announced on TV. Earlier reports said Ms Bhutto had only been injured and taken to hospital.
Ms Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally in the town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off. At least 15 other people are reported killed in the attack and several more were injured. Ms Bhutto had twice been the country’s prime minister. She was campaigning ahead of elections due in January.
‘She expired’
The explosion occurred close to an entrance gate of the park in Rawalpindi where Ms Bhutto had been speaking. Benazir Bhutto had been addressing rallies in many parts of Pakistan
PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar initially said that Ms Bhutto was safe. But later he told the BBC that Ms Bhutto had died. Another member of the PPP, Wasif Ali Khan, told the Associated Press news agency from the Rawalpindi General Hospital: “At 6:16 pm (1316 GMT) she expired.”
I, like most Pakistanis, am still too numb with shock and grief to think coherently about what has happened or what the implications of this are for the country and for the world. But this I know, whether you agreed with her political positions or not you cannot but be in shock. Even as I type these lines I am literally shaking. Hers was a tragic life story. So tragic that had it not been real no one would have believed it.
At this point all sorts of thoughts float through the politics of this. Why did this happen? Why was it not stopped? What could have been done to stop this senseless murder? Maybe she should not have come back? Who did this? What will this mean for the elections? What will this mean for the PPP? What will this mean for Gen. Musharraf? What will this mean for Pakistan? But all of these are paled by thoughts about Benazir as a person. The woman. The wife. The mother. The human being. What about her?
I have not always agreed with her politically but there was always a respect for her political courage. I had met her many times, first as a journalist covering her when she had just returned to Pakistan in the Zia era and before she became Prime Minister. Later a number of times in her two stints as Prime Minister and thena few times during her exile. In that last period she toll to referring to me as “Professor sahib” and some of our exchanges were more candid (at least on my part) than they had been earlier.
At a human level this is a tragedy like no other. Only a few days ago I was mentioning to someone that the single most tragic person in all of Pakistan – maybe all the world – is Nusrat Bhutto. Benazir’s mother. Think about it. Her husband, killed. One son alledgedly poisoned. Another son assassinated. Daughter rises to be Prime Minister twice, but jailed, exiled, and finally gunned down.
Today, in shock, I can think only of Benazir Bhutto the human being. Tomorrow, maybe, I will think of politics.
Dear friends – people of Pakistan,
My heart goes out to you all pakistanis friends on this your- my day of sadness and grief may your future have peace and procperity .
I am shacked, I cannot beleive that our beloved Benazir Bhutto has gone.
Benazir Bhutto is national hero, she is Bosnian (Bosnia & Hezegovina) hero. Benazir Bhutto was a mother, a wife, and more than that love of milions of pakistanis, she was mother of all Bosnian children, she was my sister, and Benazir Bhutto was admired, recpected and more than that beloved of all Bosnians.
When war was boiled in Bosnia , during 1992-1995) and Bosnians were “floating” in the bloodshed, Benazir Bhutto, ONLY, Benazir Bhutto with Tansu Chiller- former and first vomen prime minister of Turkey, was brave and visited Sarajevo- Bosnia. What a brave women.
I worry for the future of Pakistan for the region and than the world.
I am sad. I am scared. I am crying.
Inna-lillahi wa-inna ilahi rajeyown.
Peace on the EARTH.
27 December is undoubtly the saddest days in the history of Pakistani Politics. She will always be missed.
Pakistan will never change until a revolutionery mindset emerges from within Pakistani establishment. Until then it is all a battle of titans where poor people will die for nothing.
This blog and especially this particular ‘thread’ may bear witness to how we Pakistanis coped with the death of an icon. And I am not going to say that I am being just emotional to call her an icon, glossing over BB’s faults, just because she is dead. Our messages post Oct. 18th attack bear witness to my admiration of BB when many, if not most, were actually accusing HER for the procession through the streets of Karachi. We recorded our voice then and we are going to record our voices again. Hopefully, somewhere, someone, some giant database, records these rants and wailings and so, may in year 2300 AD or so, someone will read the flow of energy through our grey matter. Let us be recorded then!
In this vein, I’d like to paste a link to an article by Dr. Safdar Mehmood who, I think, is the same person who was the Speaker of ‘Majlis e Shoora’ (‘Iblis ki Shoora’ ‘The parliament of Lucifer’ would be proper, actually) of Gen. Zia ul Haq (the proto-Taliban of Pakistan). Quite a change of heart, if it is the same Dr. Mehmood!
http://jang.com.pk/jang/dec2007-daily/30-12-2007/c ol3.htm
I said before that Pakistan seems to have a pretty healthy supply of suicide-bombers-for-hire. They were introduced and nurtured during the days of the so-called Afghan jihad. But it took the motivation of the US invasion of Afghanistan post 9/11 with its subsequent destruction AND the introduction of suicide-for-heaven robots to come to the stage where we are now.
I found and posted a link (in this blog) from one of Hoodbhoy’s articles from the mid-80s (the height of the anti-Soviet Jihad) where he correctly predicts that the generation of Jihadis raised in Pakistan then will come to their own destructive selves by the turn of the century (year 2000!!!). But I don’t find much other material where Hoodbhoy’s concerns were shared by many others in Pakistan.
We were lead into the destructive path of Jihad by Uncle and we spinelessly allowed us to be the conduit for Uncle’s revenge against the Soviets for Vietnam. Yes, we were and we ARE a ‘client State’.
And Pakistani military, starting in the 50s, has always been a very pliant tool for the United States’ regional goals. So any discussion of the internal events of Pakistan, including BB’s murder, cannot be adequately made until the external forces are also factored in.
In this sense, the ‘political mullahs’ cannot be neutralized until we sort of repent for our sins during the dark years of Zia and realize that we stood mostly silent as our proto-Taliban Zia ul Haq implemented American agenda and ruined Pakistan. Who else bled then except the Bhuttos and their followers?!!
suicide bombing = mullahs
inciting hatred = mullahs
madrassa factories producing unproductive kids = mullahs
antipakistan = mullahs
i am not the one inciting anyone, i am just defending, anything happens it usually has a direct line heading back to the political mullahs, they are the enemy of pakistan and hate pakistan and pakistanis – they only want power, AQ and talibanism are simply an expression of pure mullahism,
mullahs are the one who are responsible not only for the murder of shaheed benazir bhutto but countless deaths right across pakistan.
this is the real enemy of peace, pakistan and islam
we should all declare jihad against mullahs and mullahism whether in madrassas, provinces ofr our army that that evil man ziaulhaq (may he rot accursed in hell infested)